


The Next Thing

by Molly



Category: Boy Meets World
Genre: BMW, Boy Meets World - Freeform, First Time, M/M, Slash, Yuletide, college-era, shawn/cory - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-18
Updated: 2008-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>When he took a step back from his Master Plan and looked around, there was a whole world there. It was scary as hell, but he thought it was probably going to be okay.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Thing

After the hospital, Cory was too jittery to go straight back to the dorm. Shawn took one look at the way his leg was bouncing up and down about a hundred times a minute, and asked Cory's dad to drop them off at the park. Joshua was okay -- finally, thank God, okay -- and so it was okay, probably, for everybody to scatter. Topanga had gone back to school already, Eric had gone off to whatever overpass he'd be sleeping under from now on, and the Matthews needed time alone with the baby. That was what logic told him, but he knew that didn't always work well with this family -- his new family -- so he watched Mr. Matthews' eyes in the rear-view mirror when he made the suggestion. He looked a little relieved, so Shawn figured it was fine.

The sky was all lit up over the trees, red and orange, but there was enough light left to make their way to the swing sets. Shawn pushed Cory into one swing, then dropped into the one beside it. They shoved themselves around idly with their feet, kicking up a low cloud of dust.

"This has been a good day," Shawn pronounced, when it was dark enough to see the first star. He looked over at Cory, grinning, and found him grinning back.

"Yeah, it has."

"We are so gonna wreck this kid." A little warm glow rose up in Shawn's chest just thinking about it. He felt the smile on his face going a little silly, but couldn't seem to care.

"It's our duty," Cory said solemnly. "Everyone expects it. They'd be disappointed if we didn't."

"I can't believe how É I don't know. I guess I can't believe it's possible to go through something so scary, and feel so good about it. A lot of bad things could've happened."

"Yeah, but none of them did." Cory glanced sideways at Shawn. He looked tired. Actually, he looked kind of like somebody had beaten him up. "Everything was okay, just like you said it would be."

Shawn raised a shoulder and dropped it. Whatever. Things could've been bad, but there'd been a pretty good chance they'd turn out fine. Shawn knew what Cory's life was like.

"I'm really glad you came back, Shawnie."

"Me, too." Shawn waited, because he'd been studying Cory Matthews for years; by now he held several advanced degrees.

"I was starting to think you'd ridden off into the sunset. Like Shane or something, only you had a truck instead of a horse. That stuff you said, back at the hospital; did you mean that? You're gonna stick around now, like you said you would?"

"Yeah, I think so. I want to, anyway." Shawn spun in the swing, twisting the chains together until he was facing Cory. "I want to, but history has shown I don't always want what's good for me."

Cory just nodded; and yeah, he really was tired if he was letting that one go. Shawn lifted his feet, and let the chains slowly rotate him back. He kicked off, a real push, and stuck his feet out to grab some height.

Watching from the ground, Cory said, "Don't you think you're a little old for that?"

"Nope," Shawn said, and kicked himself higher.

  
   


* * *

  
   


When it was too dark to pretend they were little kids anymore, they walked. Shawn stuck his hands in his pockets, safe from temptation, and paced along beside Cory under the street lamps. They went out of one pool of light and into another, over and over, never really moving through any darkness. Kind of like Cory's life, Shawn thought, and then felt so mean he hated himself for a full minute, until Cory stuck an elbow in his ribs.

"Hey. Am I all alone out here? Where's my distracting conversation? Aren't we supposed to be getting my mind off my troubles?"

"Cor, you don't have any troubles."

"Maybe not _now_," Cory allowed. "But I had plenty earlier today. And last week. And now I just want to erase it all from my memory." He stopped walking and stared up at the sky. "Erasing, erasingÉ"

Shawn shook his head, laughing. "It doesn't work that way."

"Shut up, I'm erasing."

"You're such a psycho."

"I gotta be. Look at the people I'm surrounded by. I'm outnumbered, Shawn; the last outcropping of sanity in the Matthews clan. A clan which includes you now, by the way; don't think I missed you adopting all of us, back there."

It took Shawn a few seconds to find his voice, and when he did, it came out a little rough. "I just figured it was time I returned the favor."

"I'd say it's past time."

Shawn frowned, and looked over at Cory. There was something in his tone Shawn couldn't put his finger on. "Excuse me?"

"I said, it's past time." Cory turned to look at Shawn face to face. "You've been looking for your family for as long as I've known you, Shawn. Even when you had one, you were still looking for it, and all that time, we've been right here. I've been right here."

"Yeah," Shawn said, "I know. Right here, right beside me, my whole life. No matter what I did, or where I went." He shook off the hand Cory tried to reach him with. "No matter what I actually wanted."

"God." Cory whirled away, pacing a few steps toward the edge of the circle of light they were standing in. "There you go again. What does that even _mean_? _I_ don't know. And you're not going to tell me, either, are you." His shoulders fell, and his head dropped forward. "What does it matter, anyway? It's not like it's the first time."

Shawn didn't know what to say to that; it was stupid to want stuff you weren't ever going to have, and worse than stupid to talk about it out loud. The silence between them got longer. _Stupid,_ Shawn reminded himself when he was tempted to break it. Instead, he started walking again.

He hadn't gone far when Cory jogged up and fell into step beside him.

  
   


* * *

  
   


There was a party the day Joshua turned a month old, because of those crazy dark days when nobody knew for sure he'd make it that long. When everyone had gone home, Topanga took Cory out onto the back porch and broke up with him under his tree-house. Cory wasn't sure what she was saying to him at first; she had to repeat herself several times, the last over quite a lot of yelling.

"I'm sorry, Cory," she said, when he finally understood that she meant it. "I've given this a lot of thought."

"Well, that's clearly not your strong suit, is it!"

"You were right, that night in the hospital. I have lost the old, strange Topanga from when we were kids. But you're not that Cory anymore, either. I think that's something we did to each other."

"Topanga, we can be those people again." He paced from one end of the patio to the other, unable to keep still. "We just got caught up somewhere along the way in all this stuff that doesn't really matter, this grown-up stuff--"

"We can be those people. But not together. Look, Cory -- I love you. I'm always going to love you. But we're not good for each other. We make each other less than we are. Less than we should be, anyway."

"That's just crazy-talk. I don't understand how it is that you don't understand this. We're supposed to be together. I know it, you know it -- hell, even Shawn knows it. Why won't you just let us be together?"

"Okay. Look at it this way. How do I make you feel?"

"Good. Happy!" He waved his arms for emphasis, in case she wasn't getting it. "Safe."

"Exactly."

Cory broke off his pacing, and stared. "_Excuse_ me?"

"We're not supposed to be safe yet. Safe is years away. This is the time when we're supposed to be challenging ourselves, finding out who we are. Instead we've got our lives mapped out for the next fifty years."

"I like feeling safe, Topanga. I thought you liked it, too. When we're together, I feel like no matter what happens, things will turn out okay. Why isn't that a good thing?"

"Cory, don't you see? I'm not the person who can change the world for you." Topanga cupped his face in her hands and smiled. "I'm just the person who makes it okay for you not to find out who that is."

"I like knowing what's going to happen next."

"I know. I just think...we both like that a little too much."

There were tears in her eyes; Cory couldn't pretend she wasn't serious, not when she looked at him like that. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. She hugged him back; Topanga had never been easy on his ribs, and this wasn't any exception. He just wished it didn't feel like there was a chasm at their feet and he was about to toss her in.

"Are you okay?" he said quietly into her ear.

"Yeah, I think I am."

He swallowed hard, his heart beating like a jackhammer against his ribs. "Are you scared?"

"Terrified."

He nodded, and held her tighter. "Me, too."

  
   


* * *

  
   


The world without Topanga was different. Not that Topanga vanished; if anything, Cory saw more of her now. She sat next to him in the classes they had together, ate lunch with him in the Union, and called him up to talk about stuff he really would have rather not known. David somebody or other kept leering at her in her Econ class, and he was cute so she wasn't sure if she should be offended or try to leer back. Angela had lost two of her Backstreet Boys CDs and wouldn't even admit she'd borrowed them. Tattoos, she wondered: edgy, or just slutty? And did placement make a difference? Not to mention the education he got on the subject of private female matters. _OUR RELATIONSHIP HAS CHANGED,_ she was screaming in silent stereo, every time she talked to him, _AND I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE, SO GET USED TO IT!_

Cory got used to it. He thought he missed her, but as time went on he started to think maybe he didn't. She was right there, after all; hard to miss somebody when they're painting their toenails at the foot of your bed and getting pink polish all over your sheets. What he missed, he thought, was the thing she'd said was so bad for them: the future they'd planned. All the stuff he'd thought he would have if he just did the next thing perfectly right, and the next, and the next. Now when he looked ahead, it was all fog and uncertainty, and he couldn't narrow his focus down to doing the next thing perfectly right because he wasn't sure what the next thing was.

That was how he figured out that she'd been right. When he took a step back from his Master Plan and looked around, there was a whole world there. It was scary as hell, but he thought it was probably going to be okay.

When he told Shawn about his epiphany, Shawn just shook his head and laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"You are," Shawn said, still grinning. "You'd think after twenty years or so, you'd get over the shock of Topanga always being right."

Cory glared, and threw a pillow at Shawn's head. "You thought I should marry her, too. It was practically your idea."

"I wanted you to have what you wanted," Shawn said. "Still do." He threw the pillow back, with significantly better aim than Cory's. He smiled -- a little sadly, Cory thought. "When you figure out what that is, let me know."

  
   


* * *

  
   


Shawn and Cory's summer plan was to slack off, as passionately and frequently as possible. Cory had a list of all the things they hadn't done because they were trying so hard not to flunk out of college, and he was determined to get through it all between June and September. He needed something normal. Part of it was Topanga's internship -- even as just friends, he wasn't entirely sure he could live without her -- and part of it was the way the entire world kept changing on him. He'd gotten a new brother out of it, and that was a good thing, but he had no fiancée, he was about to have no ex-fiancée, and sometimes he felt like he had no best friend, either. It wasn't that Shawn was pulling away from him; kind of the opposite, actually. It was that every time he turned around, Shawn was somebody different.

The summer before senior year was supposed to be theirs. Cory wanted to reconnect -- no, that wasn't quite right. He wanted to drop anchor. It was just the sort of thing Topanga would have yelled at him for. He wasn't any good at being just Cory alone; he liked being the other half of something. The other half of Cory and Topanga, the other half of Cory and Shawn. With Topanga gone, he wanted to get back to basics.

He should have known better than to make plans.

"I'm sorry," he said, standing next to Shawn while he stuffed clothes in a duffle bag. "You're doing what?"

"Traveling. Me and Evan Peterson -- you know Evan, right?"

Oh, Cory knew him. Evan Peterson was everywhere lately: in his classes, in the union, in his dorm room camped out at Shawn's desk. Wherever Shawn was, Evan wasn't too far behind. He had dark hair like Shawn's, and soulful dark eyes, and a piano player's hands. He was _arty_, in that pale, tortured way everybody found so disarming.

Everybody but Cory.

"What about our plans?" he said, trying not to hear the whine in his voice.

Shawn looked up, and grinned. "What, you mean our big plan to do absolutely nothing? C'mon, Cor, it's not like we made up a schedule or anything. You and I can hang out when I get back."

"Back from where?"

"I don't know. That's the beauty of it. We're just going to get in Evan's car and drive. See where the road takes us." Shawn zipped up his bag and straightened, slinging it over his shoulder. "It's just a couple of weeks, okay? I'll be back before you know it."

"Sure you will," Cory said.

Shawn's smile slipped away. "Cory, I'm sorry. I didn't think this was a big deal. Evan asked, and it seemed like fun. And I think it'll be good for me to spend some time with...somebody I haven't always spent time with. I like him."

"Oh, well, if you _like_ him," Cory said. He sounded vicious, and kind of hated himself for it, but he couldn't stop himself. "I wouldn't want to keep you from spending the last summer before your senior year with somebody you _like_."

"You're not hearing me, Cory." Shawn threw his duffle on the bed and walked away, stopping just before he got to the door. The set of his shoulders was tense and angry. When he turned, his face was set the same way. "I _like_ him. I'm interested in finding out how much I like him. He's been hitting on me for about six weeks, so I'm pretty sure he's interested in finding out the same thing. That's why I'm going. It doesn't have anything to do with you. For God's sake." He shook his head, looking at Cory with such intense disappointment, he felt it like a slap. "Not everything in my life is about you."

_That's a lie,_ Cory almost said. But he didn't, because he knew Shawn would hit him. He could see that far into the future. Shawn would hit him, and Cory would deserve it. Instead he sat down -- fell, mostly, but he landed on a chair, so sitting was close enough. "Shawn?" he said, like he was blind in a strange room, reaching out for anything familiar.

"I'm sorry. I know that doesn't fit in with the way you see me, but I won't pretend for you that it's not there. Not anymore."

"How long--"

"Have I known? Just about forever."

Cory's head spun. He looked around the room -- _their_ room -- and it was like everything in it was new. Shawn's side, specifically, was new. Shawn Hunter, his best friend -- or so he'd thought, anyway. It was starting to look like Shawn was just his favorite stranger.

"I can't believe this," he said softly. "I can't believe you could do this. To _me_, Shawn. How could you do this to me?"

Shawn's face went absolutely white, except for two bright spots of anger on his cheeks. "I have to go."

"Of course you do," Cory said. He stood up, heart pounding, his hands fisted at his side. "Of course you have to go, because you don't have anything here, right? Just the idiot who thought he was your best friend, who's apparently never even _met_ you." He laughed around the hard, cold lump in his throat. "Go ahead and go," he said, waving at the door. "I probably won't even know the difference. It's not like you were ever here to start with."

"Cory." Shawn dropped his bag by the door, and moved closer. "Please, don't be this way." His eyes were huge, like they got when he was trying not to cry; Cory knew the look, knew he'd put it there, and didn't care. He _didn't_.

"Your ride's waiting," Cory said, looking away.

"I can't go anywhere like this."

"From where I'm standing, _going_ has never been a problem for you. It's the sticking around part you're not very good at."

"Is this still about the road trip? Because this is different, Cory, it's not like that. I'm going on... on an extended date, that's all. I'm coming back. I promised you I'd stick around this time, and I'm sticking around; I don't know what else you want from me."

"How about an introduction?" Cory stuck out his hand. "Hi, I'm Cory Matthews. Who are you?"

Shawn laughed a little, uncertainly. When Cory's face didn't change at all, he trailed off. "Come on, Cory," he said, "You don't mean that. You know who I am."

"No, Shawn, I don't. I have no idea. I don't know, maybe it's because you don't know either." Cory's hand fell to his side. "All I know is, you pulled out. You went away, and you didn't even care enough to tell me you were leaving."

"Hey, I said goodbye. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but I did it. Don't tell me I don't care."

"I'm not talking about your road trip. I'm talking about you being so screwed up you join a cult, and I don't know about it. I'm talking about you feeling so bad you have to start drinking to feel good again, and I never knew you were hurting in the first place."

"That's all ancient history, that's not what this is about--"

"Okay, then," Cory said. "You want current events? _Let's_ talk about the road trip. Your father dies, and you act like you're dealing fine right up until you tell me you're leaving, maybe forever. Now you've got a _boyfriend_, and I'm apparently not important enough to know that, either. What the hell, Shawn? ...if that is your _real_ name."

Shawn's shoulders hunched. He didn't look at Cory, and Cory figured that was just as well, because he didn't trust himself not to slug Shawn if he had to look at him straight on. "I was going to tell you. It was... It was just personal."

"Oh, I understand 'personal'. Like your secret poetry, that you've been writing for years and never said a word about. That's personal, too."

"Yes, it is."

"Right." Cory nodded, hard and fast. "Right, it is. The thing is... I thought _we_ were personal. We were best friends, and you owed it to me to let me see who you were. You didn't. I can't believe you didn't think enough of me to do that."

"No. No, Cory, it wasn't that. You know how much I--"

"Care? Trust me, Shawn, you do not want to tell me how much you _care_ about me right now. God..." Cory shook his head, struggling with the sheer scope of it. "You didn't even _like_ me, did you. How could you? I wasn't deep enough, I wasn't cool enough, I wasn't hip enough. I was never going to be able to understand your poetic soul, right, so why waste time by giving me a chance."

"Look, I get that you're mad, but you don't have to be stupid, too. Don't put words in my mouth. If I held out on you, it was because I needed something for myself, something that wasn't going to go away when you did. You're never going to get it, are you?" Shawn shook his head and punched a finger toward Cory's chest. "You left me first. You walked away from _me_. I only left when I was sure you weren't coming back."

"What are you talking about? I haven't gone anywhere. I've never gone anywhere!"

"Haven't you? Ever since I met you, you've been moving ahead at this breakneck speed, into your perfect little life with Topanga and two-point-five-kids, and somewhere in there, I just... I figured out that I'm never going to be able to keep up. It's not fair to either of us for me to try. I have to find out who I am without you, Cory. I don't want to, but it's the only way I make it out alive."

"Maybe that's the difference between you and me. I don't want to know who I am without you. I don't think that's a guy I'd care to know."

"No, the difference between you and me is that you've got the world at your feet, and you know what I have? I've got you." He met Cory's eyes, and Cory could see how much that cost him. "I'm sorry, but that scares the hell out of me, Cor."

"_This_ is what scares me." Cory waved a hand at the space between them. There was too much of it; there'd always been too much, but this was different. This was deliberate; it was space Shawn had put there. Space he'd _fought_ for, a thought that made Cory's stomach turn. "I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for you to..." He trailed off. "No, that's wrong. I'm never going to be ready for you to leave, Shawn. Not in a truck and not in your head. I need you to be where I am."

"Yeah, well." Shawn spread his arms to encompass the room, Cory... everything. He laughed; it was probably the most lost sound Cory had ever heard. "I'm still here, right? The extremely hot guy who was waiting for me downstairs has probably driven off by now, and I'm still up here with you." He wrapped his arms around himself, hugging his elbows in. "Obviously, this whole letting go thing is trickier than it looks."

Cory closed his eyes for a minute. He just needed to take a few breaths. Get himself steady. Because whoever else this guy was, he was Shawn, and he was here. Maybe he was a lost, broken, sad _gay poet_, but he was here, and as long as he was here, things would be okay.

Somehow. If they could get past the people they'd turned into, maybe, and remember who they were.

"Shawnie." Cory went to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Shawn's skin was warm and solid, but he was shaking, and Cory could feel the echo of it in himself. "I'm incredibly angry right now, but that's not what's important. The important thing is, I miss you. I can't even express to you how much I miss my best friend. If I'm the one who did this, if I pushed _you_ away, then it's the worst thing I've ever done in my whole life, and I'm sorry. If I'd known I was leaving, I never would have left. I would've waited for you. I thought you were right behind me."

Shawn hugged himself tighter. Under Cory's hand, he was shaking like a leaf. "Topanga was right behind you. I was the guy waving from the sidelines."

"You just let me go. How could you just let me go?"

"How could you take off and not check to see if I was with you? Cory...you have no idea what it's like to always put one person ahead of everything else, and never get that back from them. I was always going to be in second place with you. All I've been doing is trying to accept that with some dignity."

"Okay, that's wrong." Cory took Shawn by both shoulders and shook him lightly. Like he could shake a little sense into him, if he really tried. "You never came in second with me, never. You would have known that if you'd ever bothered to get in the game."

"No offense, Cor, but...we're not exactly playing the same game, here." Shawn smiled crookedly. "Not on the same team, anyway."

"How do you know?"

Shawn's smile faltered. "What?"

Cory closed all the remaining distance between them. Maybe it wasn't the best thing to do, and it certainly wasn't the best time, but it felt right. Cory liked being the other half of things. He shifted his hands higher, and touched the skin just above Shawn's collar with his thumbs. "You heard me," Cory said. "I said, how do you _know?_"

  
   


* * *

  
   


Shawn's throat burned where Cory touched him. Because it was Cory, he knew; because he'd done more than that with Evan, and it hadn't come anywhere close to this. Which made this a very, very bad idea; in fact, everything in his entire life that had ever led up to this suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.

He reached up to hold Cory's wrists, and gently pushed them away. "Cory, I--" He swallowed, trying to kill the want he could hear so clearly in his voice. "I can't do this."

"Why not?" Cory pulled his arms back, but that left Shawn holding him by his hands. He tried to let go, but Cory just used the leverage to pull himself closer. "Give me one good reason."

Shawn laughed, a little too close to hysterics. "I don't have time to list all the very good reasons. To start with, you can't just suddenly be gay because you think it'll keep me from driving off with Evan." Who was halfway to Nebraska by now, if he had any sense; and Shawn was pretty sure he did.

Cory tilted his head to one side, thinking about that far too hard for Shawn's comfort. "Isn't pretending to be gay to keep your male best friend from leaving you for another guy pretty gay all on its own?"

"That's..." Shawn lost his train of thought, all snarled up Cory-logic. He shook his head to clear it. "That's beside the point."

"I don't think it is." Cory grinned. "I think it's exactly the point. In fact, I think it may be the solution to all of our problems. Come to think of it, it may be the cause of all our problems, too." His eyes went a little fuzzy with concentration. "That's sort of cosmically perfect, don't you think?"

Shawn yanked his hands away from Cory, grabbed his arms, and shoved him into his desk chair. He pointed a finger at Cory's chest warningly. "Okay, don't move. Pay attention. I'm going to demonstrate why this is a bad idea, and why it won't work for me anyway, and why it's a non-issue. You ready?"

Cory leaned back, hooking one arm over the back of the chair. Shawn swallowed, shifted his eyes to a spot somewhere over Cory's shoulder. Not so far away that he couldn't see Cory's smile widen. "Hit me, baby."

Shawn groaned.

"No, really, I'm listening." He wiped the grin off his face. "Hit me."

"Hopefully, it won't come to that. Just listen."

"I'm ready."

Shawn took a deep, steadying breath. He braced himself. "I love you, Cory."

Cory's face went soft -- a deep, sappy kind of soft that made Shawn's heart stutter in his chest. "I love you, too, Shawn--"

"Listening!" Shawn said, panicked. "You're just listening!"

"Sorry, sorry. Okay, go."

"I don't just mean _I-love-you-man,_ I love you. I mean I love you like...love. Actual real love. You come first in my heart, Cory. There's no one in my life who's ever come close, and there never will be."

A tiny smile turned up the corner of Cory's mouth.

"Okay," Shawn said in a totally different, totally business-like voice. "You got that?"

"Oh, I got it," Cory said. He stood up and tried to move closer. Shawn got a hand up between them and stopped him, exerting a solid pressure at the center of his chest. Cory frowned in confusion. "What?"

Shawn felt himself starting to crack. Holding Cory off took every bit of willpower he had. "Now," he said unsteadily. "You say that back to me."

"I already said--"

"All of it, Cory."

"You think I won't?"

Sadness welled up in Shawn's throat, made his voice come out tense and ragged. "I think you can't. We're being honest, here, remember?"

"Okay." Cory nodded. He pulled Shawn's hand away from his chest, and put his own hand over Shawn's heart instead. "I love you," he said easily, and there was no shadow of a lie in his eyes that Shawn could see. "You come first in my heart. There's no one in my life who's ever come close, and there never will be."

Shawn shook his head before Cory could even finish. "You're... No. I don't believe you, Cory."

"There's no one in my life who's ever come close," Cory said firmly. "There never will be."

"Topanga's not imaginary. You can't just write her out of the story."

"I never would. I love the little vixen. But she was right; she's not the person in my life who makes everything better. _You_ are. You always have been, Shawn. Don't try to tell me you don't know that."

"Cory, I've screwed things up for you so many times, in so many ways, I've lost count over the years. You may be the best thing that ever happened to me, but I'm the worst thing that ever happened to you. This..." He ran his hand through his hair, shaking his head. He'd done it again; everything he'd done to try and avoid this moment had only ever made things worse. "This is just one more way I've screwed you up. I should get paid for this; it's my one true talent."

"That's a lie, and I won't listen to another word of it." Cory's hand made a fist in Shawn's shirt; he shoved him back, hard. "Take it back, or get the hell out."

Shawn's jaw snapped shut. "...Excuse me?"

"You may be the biggest screw-up I know, Shawn, but one thing you have never done is screw up with me. You never made things worse. My entire life, you made them better. Just by showing up, you always made things better."

Shawn shook his head blindly. "Cory."

"No, now it's your turn to listen. You think this doesn't surprise me? God. It knocks my socks off, okay? I wanted so bad to be this perfect all-American kid. All my life, if you showed me an easy, expected road, I ran down it as fast as I could. I ran right past the one person who needed me most, who never let me down, who always had my back -- no matter what. I'm an idiot. I had you with me my entire life but I never knew I could _have_ you. Nobody ever told me that." His eyes narrowed dangerously. "You, specifically, didn't tell me that."

"I ..." Shawn swallowed, and licked at suddenly dry lips. "I didn't think you'd want to hear it."

"Yes, well. You're an idiot, too. You know we're going to have to talk about your trust issues, right?"

Shawn laughed, shaky and breathless. Cory stood perfectly, perfectly still, and Shawn didn't reach for him, didn't push. Didn't grab him and hold on, like he wanted. "I guess so," Shawn said finally.

The hand on Shawn's chest gave a tug, and Shawn stumbled closer. Cory's hands came up first, grabbing Shawn's shoulders like he was going to shove him away, but he didn't. He didn't push Shawn away. He pulled himself in, his body long and hard against Shawn's, his mouth a second away, then there: committed, lips soft and clumsy, the sweetest and easiest touch Shawn had ever known. He tried to say something, he didn't know what, something stupid probably, but Cory wouldn't let him; he opened Shawn's mouth up with his tongue and pressed inside, and Shawn's brain short-circuited and shut down, nothing but static.

"Oh, my God," Shawn said, a little while later. He was on the bed -- no idea how he'd gotten there, and he didn't really care because Cory was with him, looking down at him with hazy, sweet eyes. "Have you always kissed like that?"

Cory grinned, so smug Shawn would have smacked him if he weren't still feeling the source of that grin all the way down to his toes. "Looks like you're not the only one who can have secrets."

Shawn laughed breathlessly. "Got any more where that one came from?"

"Topanga didn't even know all of that secret."

"That's what she gets for being a nice girl." Shawn leaned up and licked at Cory's lower lip; no intent, really. Just because he could. "I wonder what she'd say if she could see us now."

Cory's eye went distant and thoughtful. "I think she'd say, 'Stop that; you're boys!'"

Shawn grinned. "After that."

"She'd say she knew it all along."

"Yeah." He could almost hear it, and weirdly, it didn't feel weird. Shawn had a funny feeling Topanga had known what she was doing when she broke up with Cory. "You think she had any idea?"

"I think...maybe. Maybe that's what she was trying to tell me; I had to let go of this fantasy I had of a picture-perfect normal life with her before I could see where I really belonged. I kind of feel like I should send her a thank-you note," Cory said, grinning.

Shawn flipped Cory over, landing half on top of him. "I think that's a really good idea," he said, making his voice as low and hot as he knew how. He had a reputation to maintain, after all. "Let's do that later."

Cory's eyes widened. His face broke into a wide, eager grin. "You mean... _later_ later?"

Shawn ran a slow, lazy hand down the center of Cory's chest. He smiled, feeling it down to his feet: a click, solid and strong, like the last piece of a puzzle falling into place. He leaned in to whisper in Cory's ear. "I mean _after_."

Cory's eyes got very big. "Oh," he said, sounding very short of breath.

"Oh," Shawn repeated. He let his hand move lower.

"Oh," Cory said again, "you mean _after_ after--" and Shawn growled and pressed him down in to the mattress.

Cory started laughing, and only stopped when Shawn gave him something better to do.


End file.
